PhD programmes

PhD study is formally organised within the three PhD programmes described below. These programmes allow PhD research projects to focus on a wide range of thematic areas guaranteed by particular supervisors. The applicants may discuss the selection of most appropriate study programme for their dissertation project with their prospective supervisor.

Social Geography and Regional Development

The subject of study is the geographical organisation of society and its development. The programme is particularly concerned with, among others, analytical and synthetic evaluation of the system of settlement and the process of urbanisation; the hierarchical organisation of regions; territorial differentiation of social and economic phenomena and identification of the role of their conditioning factors. In terms of its applied dimension, this study relates to problems of regional development, administrative division, and locational aspects of various socio-economic phenomena.

Regional and Political Geography

The programme explores regional and political geographies of the globalizing world at different spatial scales (from local to global). It deals with research topics such as (multi-scalar) governance, geographies of the state, nationalism, identity, elections, peace and conflict, geopolitics, politics of the environment, integration and disintegration processes, or institutional structures approached from the perspectives of political and regional geography.

General Issues in Geography

General Issues in Geography as a programme of doctoral studies constitute an effort to find the touching/intersected topics that link the previous programmes of doctoral studies. It attempts to respond to the current rapid development of geographical fields as well as the development of a current landscape as focus of geographical study by applying holistic approaches to the solutions of crucial problems our society faces. The PhD programme is focused also on the issue of geograpical education. The studies proceed in three thematic directions integrating the character of geographic research:

geographic thought;

landscape development;

education in geography.

There is the assumption that one of them is a major focus of the research effort of a PhD student. The remaining two will allow to a student of the doctoral studies to be firmly anchored in the general, integrating issue of geographic fields.